Russell Rice
Russell Rice played football at Van Lear in Johnson County until the manpower-depleted team voted to give up the sport near the end of the 1941 season. In the 1920s and 30s the town was known for its hard-hitting football as well as its basketball prowess, with high school teams as well as league baseball teams. Rice came along at a time when the football teams had begun to wane. He was 5’9 and weighed only 125 pounds. He played center and linebacker, but his “fighting spirit outweighed his playing ability.”
After high school, Rice joined the US Marines, eventually returning home to work in the coal industry “shooting, drilling loading, track-laying […] everything but driving the mine ponies.” The mine ponies were the small animals used to pull loaded rail cars from the mines. Van Lear’s mascot, the Bank Mule, was derived from these creatures.
Rice attended Kentucky Wesleyan College for one year, and then the University of Kentucky, graduating in 1951.
He spent a year and a half as editor of the Whitesburg Mountain Eagle and the Hazard Herald. Rice then joined the Lexington Leader as a reporter and volunteer photographer.
In 1962 Rice was made sports editor of the Lexington Leader, and in 1967 he became Assistant Sports Information Director at the University of Kentucky. Rice was appointed Director of Sports Information in 1969.
After his retirement Rice continued to write regular columns for the Cats Pause. He has authored several books on UK sports, including “Adolph Rupp: Kentucky’s Basketball Baron.”
Russell Rice was voted into the University of Kentucky Athletics Hall of Fame in 2011.
